The journey to this point

Everyone looks up at the stars when they are young, and wonders. But this isn’t a philosophical post, this is an introduction. This weblog is about my journey from buying a new telescope, for both optical and photographical purposes, to what I do and what I see. More than an observational log, though that is what it was going to be originally. It will be my frustrations and triumphs, bits I buy, change, amend, and hopefully soon pictures of what I can see and longer exposure of things I can’t.

I probably should say something about my background. I was fist given a (tube! like a pirate captain’s variant) telescope when I was about five, it was a heavy metal tube, not totally a child’s toy. The optics were acceptable, I could see the craters on the moon (and cows at the other end of the field). Not much more than that. A few years later, my mother bought me a 3″ reflector, on a wooden tripod, with which I could resolve double stars, and see the shadows of the mountains on the moon. I still have it. But over the years, the mirror lost its silver, and the tripod got rickety, and it kind of lost its will to live. I mean, it was old when I got it, and we are talking over three decades on.

My love of the stars never left, and I studied further at college, and used their huge scope in the observatory. I remember taking the young lady I was courting up there, and showing her Andromeda, a glorious sight in a huge scope. (That young lady I was courting is now my wife, mother to my children and doing an astronomy GCSE! While I would be an astrophysicist, she is a physicist.)

So I’ll record what goes on here, the next post being a list of the equipment I am starting with. With photos! And specifications! But no costs. This *is* an expensive hobby. But like all things I buy, it will last for a long, long time. I get the use out of my purchases.